Lyrics of the heart :: :: University of Virginia Library

What now to her is all the world's esteems;
She is awake, and cares not for its dreams;
But moves, while yet on earth, as one above
Its hopes and fears—its loathing and its love.
CRABBE.

'Tis said she once was beautiful; and still,—
For 'tis not Time that can have wrought the ill,—
Soft rays of loveliness around her form
Beam, as the rainbow that succeeds the storm
Brightens a noble ruin. In her face,
Though somewhat touched by sorrow, you may trace
How fair she was in life's untroubled spring,
Ere joy grew sere, or earthly hope took wing.
O'er her pure forehead, pale as moonlit snow,
Her ebon locks are parted,—and her brow
Breaks forth like morning from the shades of night,
Serene, though clouds hang over it: the bright
And searching glance of her Ithuriel eye
Might even the sternest hypocrite defy
To meet it unappalled;—'twould almost seem
As though, epitomized in one deep beam,

150

Her full collected soul upon the heart,
Whate'er its mask, she strove at once to dart.
Patient in suffering, she has learned the art
To bleed in silence and conceal the smart;
And oft, though quick of feeling, has been deemed
Almost as cold and loveless as she seemed,
Because to fools she never would reveal
Wounds they would probe without the power to heal.
No; whatsoe'er the visions that disturb
The fountain of her thoughts, she knows to curb
Each outward sign of sorrow, and suppress,
Even to a sigh, all tokens of distress.
Yet some, perhaps with keener vision than
The crowd, that pass her by unnoted, can,
Through well-dissembled smiles, at times discern
A settled anguish, that would seem to burn
The very brain that quickens it; and when
This mood of pain is on her, then, oh! then
A more than wonted paleness of the cheek,
And, it may be, a flitting hectic streak,
A tremulous motion of the lip or eye,
Are all that anxious friendship can descry.
Unkindness and neglect she knows to bear
Without complaint, almost without a tear,
Save such as hearts internally will weep,
And they ne'er rise the burning 'lids to steep:

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But to those petty wrongs that half defy
Human forbearance, she can make reply
With a proud lip and a contemptuous eye.
There is a speaking sadness in her air,
A shade of languor o'er her features fair,
Born of no common grief; as though Despair
Had wrestled with her spirit, been o'erthrown,
And these the trophies of the strife alone.
A resignation of the will, a calm
Derived from true religion (that sweet balm
For wounded breasts), is seated on her brow;
And ever to the tempest bends she now,
Even as a drooping lily that the wind
Sways as it lists. The sweet affections bind
Her sympathies to earth; her peaceful soul
Has long aspired to that immortal goal,
Where pain and anguish cease to be our lot,
And worldly cares and frailties are forgot.